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sila: whoa!! that sure looks like fun! well done on participating and great job learning! hopefully you can…Hisham: Sure thing, Luke! Hope to see the birthday wish too if it’s possible.Luke: Hi, I would like to use one of ur photo to design a birthday wish for Sitiawan. I would put a credit …Hisham: Let’s just say “Canto Bight” was originally the name of some Tapani Sector noble’s pet duck.Edward: Or the city was named after the planet. Or they were both named after some forgotten dignitary. Weird…sila: glad that opah felt better though. hope she continues to feel healthy.sila: yay to a successful surgery! i hope you are recovering nicely. i’m imagining weird things with the s…Hisham: Thanks, chief. And yes I think your name is the longest we’ve ever had on here. Haha.

About

Hisham and Sila has been writing stuff down on this weblog since 2005. Sometimes they post photos of family, sometimes they talk about film, books and music, sometimes there is artwork and stuff about tabletop gaming.

Download the PDF files at the link above for use in espionage tabletop role-playing games, from Night's Black Agents to Covert Ops! This series of paper miniatures display a group of secret agents in high society (or what I think is high society based on a miasma of movies that merge together in a single mass in my mind) trying to schmooze it up with guns and high tech devices.

As per the previous releases, the Pioneer-class file (with flat colours) is free for download. The Mariner-class (with shaded and highlighted illustrations) and the Voyager-class files (like the Mariner, plus full-sized character artwork!) are also available for patrons.

If I have some time in the next couple of weeks, I will create and release paperminis of mooks for these guys to fight it out with. A follow-up release to this in the future will be spies... in tactical gear!

Across the Stars RPG artwork commissions have begun again! Below is the first illustration I made this year for this science fiction project:

According to the caption: A Garçon organizes appropriation documents for Hish, who is worried how much he'll pay in fines for the robot, a crashed starship, and insta-evac from the jungles of newly discovered Xanth.

Strikeforce Enteague

Episode 08: Doublecross

After their mission to Driscall, bouny hunters Shanna Toarinar and Ace Browning Crossfire along with the pirate Phoenix Avalon were assigned a new pilot, the Quarren hot dogger ace Dorniekke Nels and a temporary member, the elderly former Imperial Star Destroyer Captain Robetre.

Their commander Drew Greyhelm informed them that one of their spies Cal Tynblade had discovered the location of the Imperial transport Rectifier packed with weapons and supplies which had been lost in the Kolben Asteroid Field. They were to commandeer it to the rebel outpost on Liesson for Alliance use.

The Ambush at Kolben

The Nexus Point, piloted by Dorniekke, entered the Kolben field while Ace scanned for the location of the Rectifier. It had been parked in a cave in a large asteroid. Ace and Phoenix donned spacesuits, cycled the airlock and pushed out toward the asteroid in space.

As they close in on the asteroid, three Zero-G stormtroopers a.k.a. spacetroopers, Imperial troops in powered armour, broke cover and began firing at them with their suit cannons. Under fire, Ace and Phoenix fell back to the Point. Four TIE fighters appeared from behind the asteroid. Dorniekke turned and piloted the Point out of the field, evading rocks and cannon fire.

Once they had cleared the asteroids, Shanna pulled the hyperdrive lever and the ship jumped into hyperspace.

Strikeforce Enteague

Episode 07 Battle Among the Clouds

A CRY FOR HELP FROM IGMALAR! Drew Greyhelm received a signal from Rebel spy Ooogle Flutzgle at the swamp planet of Igmalar in the Enteague Sector. He had important information for the Alliance. Fresh from their mission to Belderone, Shanna Toarninar the bounty hunter and Viveede Briylle Colore the star pilot were assigned to meet the spy in Igmalar City to assess how dire this information was.

The Igmalar City Imperative

Viveede set the Nexus Point down in Igmalar City under a false ship ID. The city administrated the harvesting and processing of pharmaceutical materiel from the swamps of the planet and was crawling with Imperials. The local sapient species were the Grenben, who once built thie city on a mesa that towered over the rest of the swamp and had been reduced to slaves by the Empire.

In the map above, Flutzgle City is the new post-Endor name for Igmalar City.

Their spy and informer Ooogle Flutzgle was a Grenben, a tangle of prehensile vines, leaves and nodules that had been bunched up and shaped into a humanoid containment suit. Like most Grenbens, he wore a macrobinocular sight enhancer fitted onto sensory nodules his hooded mask, photosensitive plant cells enhanced to be their eyes.

Shanna and Viveede found Ooogle in the dark and dingy Blixx Alley, flustered and distressed. The Igmalar native had intercepted a transmission from the Imperial Star Destroyer Detonator, which had been sent to the Driscall system to attack the floating Rebel outpost in the skies of the gas giant there. The outpost was not prepared from the attack and their databanks held many classified information of Rebel activity here in the Enteague Sector. If the databanks fell into Imperial hands, many Rebel cells, cache and safeworlds, and major outposts like their own on Enteague Minor would be discovered and destroyed!

They would not have time to relay the data to Enteague Outpost so Shanna and Viveede had to warn Driscall outpost themselves.

They thanked Ooogle and headed back to the Nexus Point.

En route, a stormtrooper accosted them at the landing bay. The trooper attempted to test his own perception by searching the Point for illegal weapons. Fortunately for the two Rebels, his senses were just as bad as a Sljee with a flu.

Once the Nexus Point soared out into space, leaving Igmalar behind them, the Imperial Customs Frigate Tormentor made a move to intercept them in orbit. A crummy random inspection! Viveede feigned compliance, but as soon as calculations were made, Shanna pulled the hyperdrive levers and the Nexus Point launched itself into hyperspace.

The Ghost Town on Driscall!

The Nexus Point, upon detecting no Imperial Star Destroyer in orbit, glided between the blue skies above and the pinkish-white clouds below. The gas giant Driscall was primarily a tion and petroleum mining world. The planet's "life zone" was a naturally formed nitrogen-oxygen atmospheric strata with a depth of fifty kilometres. Viveede detected the Rebel outpost and flew towards it.

The outpost, substantially smaller than the ones on Enteague Minor and Kendell, was an abandoned and converted tion gas mine floating steadily above the clouds. No twin-pod cloud cars came forth to greet them despite them transmitting the proper greeting codes. Videede did a flyby and noted that the floating city was devoid of any visible occupants. It was empty.

Commander Greyhelm assigned Shanna Toarinar and Phoenix Avalon a new mission. Viveede would pilot them to the Belderone system to extract a person named Derin Heightson, who happened to be Phoenix's best friend from when they were both seven until they went their separate ways at fifteen. Phoenix lost track on Derin. It appeared when Phoenix began his career as a space pirate, Derin had built a life for himself on Belderone.

In hyperspace, they wondered what the semi-disassembled assassin droid with a riot gun doing in a heap beside the doorway in the Nexus Point's common room. Viveede told them Drew ordered the dangerous machine to be scrapped. For some reason, if it heard the words, "Sic 'em!" the inert droid would still fire its riot gun at whatever it was pointing at.

Old sketch of Viveede Briylle Colore

They decided that they would dispose of it after the upcoming mission.

The Plight of a Childhood Friend

They flew through Belderone customs and security easily with the Nexus Point, landing at the city of Thirse.

Disguised as civilians, the trio travelled through Thirse and found the residence of Derin Heightson, a small single-story house with a medium-sized yard surrounded by a three-metre tall wall. They broke in and found the overturned furniture and blaster scoring on the walls in the house. Searching the bedroom, Phoenix found a well-hidden keycard that activated Heightson's personal computer terminal. The last file recorded was a voice log clearly made during a blaster fight.

Heightson's voice told them that if he was captured, he would be taken to the Thirse security detention centre.

The sound of a stun blast cut off his voice, ending the file.

Outside, a speeder truck pulled over and a stormtrooper heavy weapons squad filed out of it. Shanna spotted them from the living room, alerted the other and laid covering fire. Phoenix pried open the back door and the trio ran out to the back yard, climb a ladder to the kitchen roof which connected with the south yard wall, and climbed down the arien vines to the alleyway.

They sprinted out the alley right into the sights of the trooper manning the heavy repeating blaster on the back of the speeder truck. The trio evaded the first volley and Phoenix threw a grenade that destroyed the truck.

Strikeforce Enteague

After their previous adventure to the "illusory" planet of Zarligrenor, the strikeforce decided to take a week off at the Ginuvar system located also in the Enteague Sector.

Episode 05 The Rogue Lieutenant

Moonlighting at Ginuvar

Ginuvar was a patchwork of territories belonging to galactic and local corporations such as Industrial Automaton, SoroSuub, BlasTech, Neurosaav and Koensayr. Ginuvar's seas were a broth of toxic compounds and most of her land were a plethora of factory complexes, power generation stations, arcologies and atmosphere scrubbers.

The NexusPoint however landed in the planetary capital of Porzohal, a city built in the Green Zone, the only territory on Ginuvar still with a green and natural ecosystem, jungles and grasslands and all in the planet's equatorial zone.

The planet log above was made after the Second Edition rulebook was released.

Phoenix Avalon and Jon Dean thought that they should let their bounty hunting team-mates Shanna Toarinar and Ace Browning Crossfire take the lead and get them some credits hunting for bounty. They headed to a local security centre and discovered that Enteague's Imperial Governor Jannor had placed a bounty of 3,000 credits on Imperial Army officer Lieutenant Shade Anghor, dead or alive, for murder, desertion and the theft of thirty million credits.

Some seedy characters on the street sent them instead to a closed cantina named "Jaillor's Place" if they were interested in the bounty.

They were met there by the most powerful person on Ginuvar, the crime lord Harv Ironfist. Every corporation on the planet paid his organisation for the permission to set up their territories on the planet while Ironfist ensured the trains ran on time and planetary security protected their business enterprises.

Knowing Shanna and Ace to be bounty hunters, he offered them double the Imperial bounty if Lieutenant Anghor was delivered to him strictly alive. Ironfist informed them that Anghor is hiding in his secret manor on Tark's Plains at the neighbouring Kreane system.

The team agree to the job and return to the Nexus Point.

The Kreane Showdown

The Point set down in a clearing among the sagebrushes of Portgont Forest. Kreane was an arid world, full of deserts, rocky plains and tall dry cold mesas. Some regions were inhospitable to Human life. Although the town of Flogrosh was nearby, they followed Ironfist's directions and began hiking north toward Tark's Plains.

They soon arrived at a ring of mountains surrounding a small freshwater lake. On the island upon the lake was Anghor's manor.

They observed five visible Imperial troops guarding the manor, allied with Anghor no doubt. They sneaked towards the only bridge to the island and disposed of the lone scout trooper guarding it.

They discovered an underground hideout in the dusty yard across the way from the T-47 airspeeders parked beside the manor. They descended into the tunnels and made short work of a pair of stormtroopers waiting for them at the doors to Anghor's subterranean operations room.

They rushed into the room. Anghor defended himself with his SoroSuub Q2 holdout blaster. His determination to be protective of his three-million-credit stash was cut short by a blue stun bolt from Shanna's blaster rifle.

The commandeered the T-47s to return to the Nexus Point with the unconscious Anghor secured.

But the two surviving scout troopers - who had been within the manor - discovered that their boss had been apprehended and hopped into the remaining T-47s to pursue the team. Upon being beset by cannonfire, Ace did a 180 degrees turn and succeeded in taking the airspeeders out of the Kreane skies himself. Then he flew back towards the manor, cracked open his canopy and demolished the building with a well-placed thermal detonator.

The team noticed that there were armed men waiting for them at the Nexus Point as they landed their airspeeders.

Shanna drew her blaster to protect her bounty, but the crowd parted to reveal the authoritative figure of Harv Ironfist in their midst. He revealed to them that Shade Anghor used to be Shade Ironfist, their marauding younger brother who had left their family business and had joined the Empire, and he went rogue there as well.

Anghor's officers gave Shanna their 6,000-credit reward in hard cash. The last thing they heard before Ironfist's group left was that "it was time for Shade to be punished by mama."

After the last aborted attempt at FESS at the hospital, I have been waiting for five months for the next scheduled surgery, spraying mometasone furoate up my nose almost daily. Finally it was time to get this pair of nasal polyps out of my sinus cavity.

It should have been an easy in-and-out surgery.

Of course there were complications from all sides.

My application for a job as a Language Tutor here was accepted and I had been scheduled to report for duty the day before the surgery. I had to call the right person at work to find out the proper procedure. Thankfully postponing reporting for duty is allowed.

The Guarantee Letter (GL) that would allow me to be admitted to the hospital wards under the workplace was rejected by hospital admissions because the printout did not include my pay grade. So we had to pay first for a Second Class Ward. Because I was warded Saturday, I waited for two days before I was able to get them to fax a newer GL.

My blood pressure, although it fluctuated up and down, appeared to be on the higher side. (It was the reason why they admitted me two days early: to monitor my blood pressure.)

On my second night, I develop a bad cough with a lot of phlegm and its cousin sputum. Their colour over the night was yellow. The anaesthetist who consulted with the ENT department recommended postponing the surgery.

Finally, according to the blood taken from me earlier, my white blood cell count was high, probably caused by the infected upper respiratory tract - why I was coughing.

The view at night from the Second Class Ward bathroom is nice.

So, I have been discharged for the hospital with no surgery done. More wasted time. I eagerly await the next date of my surgery to remove this polypoidal mucosa.